Kaffee & Küchen - Sunday December 30

With the Christmas season coming to a close we decided to have a Sunday Kaffee & Küchen to catch up with friends we had not seen in December.

We decided to make 3 baked items, use the rest of the Christmas cookies that were baked earlier in the season, have coffee  (spiked or otherwise) and juice or milk or pop for the kids that were invited.

We decided to make:

Chocolate Macadamia Nut Pie - The Hale Imale Country Store Cookbook
Gingerbread Snacking Cake - via Martha Stewart
Stollen - from an old German Cookbook

I made the the Macadamia Pie and the Gingerbread and will detail them here and here. I hope that you will take a look at all of the pages. Comments are always appreciated!

Kaffee & Küchen - From left to right - Macadamia Pie, Gingerbread, Oranges, Cookies, Stollen, Cookies

While it is now May.... I do hope you had a very Merry Christmas and will continue have an amazing New Year!

Gingerbread Snacking Cake for Boxing Day Kaffee & Küchen

As previously mentioned we decided to have a bunch of friends over for Boxing Day Kaffee & Küchen - Coffee & Cake.

One of the items I made was a Gingerbread Snacking Cake adapted from Martha Stewart.

For this recipe I used:

The Kitchen Tip that WILL Change Your Baking Life

About a month ago I came across The Great British Bake Off.... After a couple of weeks of watching almost all of the episodes (I haven't been able to see the Great British Wedding Cake episode yet) I came away with both ideas and tips.

There is one tip that WILL CHANGE YOUR BAKING LIFE!!!!

• be sure to leave your tips below

Getting butter to room temperature is always tricky. It is tough to remember to take the butter out of the fridge the night before or in enough time for it to soften properly. A microwave will help, but this method is fraught with timing problems and you never do get the butter to quite the right consistency for baking.

During the series Mary Berry - one of the GBB judges - provided the baker's life changing tip:

• to soften butter to room temperature, cut it into cubes and put the cubes in tepid water.
• the water should be about babies bath water temperature or 100˚ F or 38˚ C
• leave the butter in the water for 10 minutes and drain and it is ready to use

This method works perfectly!!! Thank you Mary!

Butter Cubes in Warm Water for 10 Minutes

Mary  Berry's latest book:

Great British Bake Off - How to Bake